The energetic activities of Japanese artists are the result of the coming to life of Media Arts

This year, too, it was very difficult to determine which prize should go to whom because the Art Division attracted nearly half the total applications this year and every accepted work was of high quality as well as having different concepts and presentations. Especially, the quality of works among interactive arts and visual images, including those which were applied for installation were very good. One work has a strong concept, another presents a cross-section of the media sprinkled with humor and nostalgia, and the other cuts out a new possibility for arts with technology which betrays one's expectations. All of them showed a balance between originality and presentation or technology as well as maturity which was impressive. In contrast, Still Images and Web Works were, it is sorry to say, lackluster. This time, we realized many award-winning works were achieved by Japanese creators only when the audition was completed, which surprised us. One can say that the unexpected big success of Japanese artists in the Art Division, where excellent works from abroad meet shows of activation in the media arts in recent Japan, is due especially to the population of young artists which has become larger.